Tag: things to tell the girl

karnythia:

becausedragonage:

makingfists:

It’s like this…

You’re fourteen and you’re reading Larry Niven’s “The Protector” because it’s your father’s favorite book and you like your father and you think he has good taste and the creature on the cover of the book looks interesting and you want to know what it’s about. And in it the female character does something better than the male character – because she’s been doing it her whole life and he’s only just learned – and he gets mad that she’s better at it than him. And you don’t understand why he would be mad about that, because, logically, she’d be better at it than him. She’s done it more. And he’s got a picture of a woman painted on the inside of his spacesuit, like a pinup girl, and it bothers you.

But you’re fourteen and you don’t know how to put this into words.

And then you’re fifteen and you’re reading “Orphans of the Sky” because it’s by a famous sci-fi author and it’s about a lost generation ship and how cool is that?!? but the women on the ship aren’t given a name until they’re married and you spend more time wondering what people call those women up until their marriage than you do focusing on the rest of the story. Even though this tidbit of information has nothing to do with the plot line of the story and is only brought up once in passing.

But it’s a random thing to get worked up about in an otherwise all right book.

Then you’re sixteen and you read “Dune” because your brother gave it to you for Christmas and it’s one of those books you have to read to earn your geek card. You spend an entire afternoon arguing over who is the main character – Paul or Jessica. And the more you contend Jessica, the more he says Paul, and you can’t make him see how the real hero is her. And you love Chani cause she’s tough and good with a knife, but at the end of the day, her killing Paul’s challengers is just a way to degrade them because those weenies lost to a girl.

Then you’re seventeen and you don’t want to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” after the first seventy pages because something about it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. All of this talk of water-brothers. You can’t even pin it down.

And then you’re eighteen and you’ve given up on classic sci-fi, but that doesn’t stop your brother or your father from trying to get you to read more.

Even when you bring them the books and bring them the passages and show them how the authors didn’t treat women like people.

Your brother says, “Well, that was because of the time it was written in.”

You get all worked up because these men couldn’t imagine a world in which women were equal, in which women were empowered and intelligent and literate and capable. 

You tell him – this, this is science fiction. This is all about imagining the world that could be and they couldn’t stand back long enough and dare to imagine how, not only technology would grow in time, but society would grow. 

But he blows you off because he can’t understand how it feels to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and desperately wanting to like the books your father likes, because your father has good taste, and being unable to, because most of those books tell you that you’re not a full person in ways that are too subtle to put into words. It’s all cognitive dissonance: a little like a song played a bit out of tempo – enough that you recognize it’s off, but not enough to pin down what exactly is wrong.

And then one day you’re twenty-two and studying sociology and some kind teacher finally gives you the words to explain all those little feelings that built and penned around inside of you for years.

It’s like the world clicking into place. 

And that’s something your brother never had to struggle with.

This is an excellent post to keep in mind when you see another recent post criticizing the current trend of dystopian sci-fi and going on about how sci-fi used to be about hope and wonder.

No. It used to be about men. And now it’s not.

Specifically white men. And I say this because a lot of the feminist sci fi centers white women & replicates the racism of classic sci fi. Not to mention the weird fetishization of POC on display in other spec fic like urban fantasy.

bansheewhale:

Unicorns are kosher. There was an actual talmudic debate and the current consensus is that unicorns are kosher. There is no conclusion to this paragraph, I just wanted to announce that I belong to a religion whose clergy members thought it was important to decide whether or not we could eat unicorns and then concluded that yes, yes we could, as long as the meat is drained of blood and not eaten with dairy.

comtessedebussy:

ajcrawly:

secretallie:

heartnell:

aromantic-eight:

aromantic-eight:

heartnell:

eighthdoctor:

heartnell:

heartnell:

i wonder what effect wide-spread/public vampirism would have on the evolution of language

like i mean obviously i havent slept properly in like two days but seriously how does it evolve without the assistance of former generations dying out. do people use the words “grisbittyng” and “yolo” in the same sentence. are there parts of big cities where its like walking into a different century like are there neighbourhoods in chicago where people literally speak old english and the teachers at the schools use old english and like the people who live two blocks away speak a creole of ge’ez and polish and like. dude i want cultural implications of vampirism that go beyond bloodbanks i want linguistics and politics and medical science and history and religion, i want hypovolemic vampires who speak akkadian in the home and are devout worshippers of inanna and have a home care nurse to help with making sure the picc line theyre getting lactated ringers solution via isnt partially occluded!!! help

ok i have no excuse for this but

i just got my drivers license renewed and can you imagine the dol dealing with ‘what is your birthdate’ ‘august 27 1662′ ‘what’

but everyone else too, all the bureaucracy’s gonna be fucked

‘bloodtype?’ ‘no preference,just fresh’

‘sir are you a senior’ ‘i was born in the fifteenth century, i should hope so’ ‘sir i’ll need to see id’

and like—how do you deal with a population that’s collecting social security while being functionally 15 or 28 or 50 what do you do about them when they don’t die what does it mean to have a group whose physical ability is unchanging, is there a vampire draft, is there a separate database for vampire SSNs because they draw social security for different reasons what is going on with that

how do term limits work, is there a mandatory down period, or are vampires bound to the same term limits as mortals and if so are there protests about this

afa social security goes i would assume in this setting it would be based on physical ability rather than necessarily age for vampires, which is very similar to what it is for humans: you can get benefits if youre 65+ OR if you physically cannot work, id assume for vampires its just the latter or else “yeah ive been on retirement for 400 years” “you’re the size of a seven-year-old” “yeah and”

hypovolemia DOES NOT count if youre a vampire, some people seem to forget that. there’s IV saline as an adtl to blood, bc quite honestly vampires are wimps and “have you ever tried to drink blood that has half a cup of salt in it?? it’s disgusting”

oh dear god IDs the big question is ofc do they show up in photographs bc if not there is a big market for photo-realistic artists in the govt and in most big companies, bc IDs with descriptions are… pretty easy to bypass, especially when you’re immortal. i’ll bet some places have fun with it, like a lot of art students’ university IDs will be ridiculously stylised, possibly like cubist or some shit.

i assume there are systems in place to keep someone from being head of state for 700 years.

murder???? how do you solve a vampire’s murder how do you identify the victim is it like “so i found this pile of ashes, and this person went missing near here recently, i guess this is our person??” does no one even bother to investigate? i feel like vamps wouldnt put up with that

……Forensic scientists specializing in ash analysis.

Would vampires have to get special, like, carbon-nitrogen profiles done? Stuff that would stay in the ashes? “We did a molecular ratio test on the ash pile and the profile matches the following individuals quite closely.”

thats FASCINATING ngl, although like i wonder how the community feels abt it, like on one hand if someone gets murdered and theres no way to identify the remains ppl are gonna get pissed, if you mandate fancy tests ppl are gonna get pissed (like how they dont want to be fingerprinted since they “arent a criminal”, u know?), its all a mess

Okay, but guys: POLITICS. I mean okay, let’s be optimistic that effectively immortal people would willingly step down from power after a number of years in office. Given how addictive power can be, it’s questionable, but like I said, optimism, because otherwise everything is basically fucked and there will never ever be social or political change whatsoever with a monarch/president still subscribing to rigid old timey values.

But still. Imagine a UN convention where a representative of one country still has visceral firsthand memories of how that dude across the room once served as a general in the war that tore his country apart. Or a Congress where former slaves and slave owners have to sit next to each other. Or a forward-thinking president trying to pass a law about gender equality when a significant segment of the population were raised in an era where women were considered property. HOW WOULD THAT EVEN WORK???

coto524 old-manrupee armoredhost queenie-bex

this is a really fantastic post.